British Papers To Stream Live Soccer

Soccer fans will be able to watch the England national team's next World Cup qualifying match against Ukraine live on newspapers' Web sites on a pay-per-view basis. This is the first time newspapers in the U.K.--which have been struggling with a steep fall in ad revenue--are tapping into a 26.6 billion-pound industry with the potential to reach up to 20 million Internet users.

"This deal is fairly unique," said Marie Bloomfield, a broadband media analyst at Screen Digest in London. She said newspaper sites are established destinations for online sports video, but generally only for shorter clips, which are typically available for free and funded by traditional advertising. This, however, involves live, long-form content, on a paid basis."

Under normal circumstances, it would be impossible for newspapers to compete with TV operators, as securing the rights to broadcast live games costs up to 1.7 billion pounds ($2.8 billion) for a season. But Kentaro, the company that owns the rights for the England-Ukraine match, was unable to secure a deal with a TV operator after the previous owner of the rights, pay-TV broadcaster Setanta, went into administration in June. (See "Bittersweet Advantage For BSkyB.")

Broadcasters in the U.K. had expressed some interest in the match, but even the BBC withdrew its bid after England secured its place in next year's World Cup when it beat Croatia last week, the British press reported, citing sources close to the negotiations.

Kentaro held talks with the major national newspapers in Britain--excluding the Financial Times--to sell the rights for the live coverage, the Guardian newspaper reported. Under the rights agreement, newspaper Web sites will not pay Kentaro to stream the live coverage, but will receive part of the sales to viewers.

But the deal shouldnt be seen as the newspapers new revenue stream; they wont be in the broadcast business anytime soon.

"This should be considered a one-off, as live rights to premium sports content are usually the reserve of major platform operators and broadcasters, said Bloomfield, as they are able to pay big sums to secure them, often on an exclusive basis.